The justices, in a 9-0 decision authored by Justice Sonia
Sotomayor, sided with Facebook over its argument that text messages the social
media company sent did not violate a 1991 federal law called the Telephone
Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).
The case highlighted the challenge for the justices in
applying outdated laws to modern technologies. The ruling sparked calls for the
U.S. Congress to update the law, enacted three decades ago to curb
telemarketing abuse by banning most unauthorized robocalls.
"By narrowing the scope of the TCPA, the court is
allowing companies the ability to assault the public with a non-stop wave of
unwanted calls and texts, around the clock," Democratic Senator Edward
Markey and Democratic Representative Anna Eshoo said in a joint statement.
The court ruled that Facebook's actions - sending text
messages without consent - did not fit within the technical definition of the
type of conduct barred by the law, which was enacted before the rise of modern
cellphone technology.
The lawsuit was filed in 2015 in California federal court by
Montana resident Noah Duguid, who said Facebook sent him many automatic text
messages without his consent. The lawsuit accused Menlo Park, California-based
Facebook of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act's restriction on
using an automatic telephone dialing system.
Facebook said the security-related messages, triggered when
users try to log in to their accounts from a new device or internet browser,
were tied to users' cellphone numbers.
"As the court recognized, the law's provisions were
never intended to prohibit companies from sending targeted security
notifications and the court's decision will allow companies to continue working
to keep the accounts of their users safe," Facebook said in a statement.
Sergei Lemberg, Duguid's lawyer, said anyone could steer
clear of liability under the law as long as they use similar technology to
Facebook's.
"This is a disappointing ruling for anyone who owns a
cellphone or values their privacy," Lemberg added.
In this instance, the lawsuit asserted that Facebook's
system that sent automated text messages was akin to a traditional automatic
dialing system - known as an autodialer - used to send robocalls.
"Duguid's quarrel is with Congress, which did not
define an autodialer as malleably as he would have liked," Sotomayor wrote
in the ruling.
The law requires that the equipment used must use a
"random or sequential number generator" but the court concluded that
Facebook's system "does not use such technology," Sotomayor added.
Duguid said that Facebook repeatedly sent him account login
notifications by text message to his cellphone even though he was not a
Facebook user and never had been. Despite numerous efforts, Duguid said he was
unable to stop Facebook from "robotexting" him.
Facebook responded that Duguid had most likely been assigned
a phone number that had been previously associated with a Facebook user who had
opted in to receive the notifications.
A federal judge threw out the lawsuit but in 2019 the San
Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived it. The 9th Circuit
took a broad view of the law, saying it not only bans devices that
automatically dial randomly generated numbers but also stored numbers that are
not randomly generated.
The National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions
said the decision "to narrowly interpret autodialers is a win for the
credit union industry."
"We have long fought for this clarity to ensure credit
unions can contact their members with important, time-sensitive financial
information without fear of violating the TCPA and facing frivolous
lawsuits," the association said in a statement.
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